THE COST OF DOING PUBLISHING BUSINESS

Harking back to yesterday’s post about two kinds of readers and two kinds of writers, now I want to go to publicity as handled by publishers who see books as a way of creating a saleable commodity, an object of value. Since it costs MUCH less proportionally to produce the actual object and there is no longer a need to store them in a warehouse or pay taxes on an inventory of books (not that this sort of publisher wouldn’t quickly grind up or remainder any books that didn’t turn over fast enough), more of the investment goes into the publicity.

The pattern is NOT figuring out how to market a book everyone loves and that the publishing house thinks will change Western thought. Far from it.

The publicity starts way back with market research to see what sells. If you look at agents and publishing house access, they tell you what they want by describing categories. Not even genres, but more micro-types like “teen vampires” or “Christians with diseases.” Someone looks through the slush pile or phones some agents to see if there is anything pre-existing. If not, a manuscript is sort of summoned out of the air: ghosted imitations with long quotes or rewordings from similar books.

THEN an author has to be found. It’s more like old-fashioned movie studios creating a star than it is like Miss Anne Shirley from Avonlea entering the cave of the publisher. This is beyond ghosting a book for a movie star, more like hoaxing, except that it is the publisher who is the hoaxer. More of an imposed identity than an assumed identity.

The next trick is to start anticipation buzz in the biz while designing the look of the book -- enough like the last successful one in that genre to get the conditioned reaction, but different enough that the customer won’t think they already have it. Certain genres have certain styles. Like scholarly books tend to have matte sepia arty photos. Westerns have embossed gilt banners in olde tyme script.

When the book as object is set, the writing is sort of poured into it, then the central casting author is photographed, flaps are written and blurbs for the back are solicited. Authors who want nice blurbs (and good treatment from their publishers, since the blurbers are often from the same “stable”) write really nice blurbs. Some of them are better written than the quoted author’s own books, probably because they spend so much time on a few sentences rather than reading the book. Of course, none are negative. If the book falls flat, no one will look to see who thought it was brilliant.

It used to be that the author was sent around the country on tour, going from one big bookstore to another. There is never any real guarantee that an audience will form. Even at Powell’s I’ve seen readings where there were maybe five people and others where there were a hundred or more crammed among the shelves, usually not reacting to the book so much as the politics or trendiness of the subject. If the author is gay, American Indian, Arab, or some other non-standard type, he or she will be handled extra-well, in order to reassure the kind of liberals who read books.

They tell me that now the idea is to compose a website, hopefully with an interactive feature like questions to the author and maybe a tour schedule. Some authors include prompts to start discussions at book clubs. Or a way you can sign up for a newsletter mailed monthly. But I’m hearing that the thing to do is to produce a DVD or at least a video for YouTube. (Serendipituously, I was interviewed on the radio by George Cole and that is on the Internet. You can find it with Google.) Then mail the DVD to potential radio or TV interviewers or to magazine and newspaper writers. Maybe a podcast.

Except for George, who actually read most of my book (I could tell because he’s the kind of person who reads with a highlighter), few-to-no interviewers read the books of the authors they interview. Someone like Oprah has staff who read for her, but most interviewers simply read the materials the publisher sent. At my publisher, the only person who actually read the book was the line editor. (Who looks for typos, bloopers, grammar.) Even the person who prepared all the handouts and publicity releases did not read the book.

Anyway, she knew nothing about the subject matter, had no contacts in the world of cowboy art, and simply didn’t have time to find out. The press had a protocol checklist: catalogue, Amazon, local universities and historical society magazines -- the end. Same for all books. It was an academic press which means that the author makes NO money. The staff makes their salary; most of the writers are faculty members who make tenure. The rest just creates the illusion of a press in the full sense.

Many publishers now ask the author to prepare for submission with their manuscript the nature of interested groups, estimated sales, marketing suggestions. This is more important than the actual manuscript. One Montana publisher said he would simply not consider any author who didn’t make it his or her mission to sell their book, no matter what it took: effort, expense, health, whatever. He cared more about the promotion than the content, more about the book than the author. He was simply being realistic.

Bookstores do promote and hand-sell via clerks, along with special set-ups like row “cap” racks and tables in the aisle or cardboard displays. Sometimes the publisher pays for this. Amazon et al and even some used bookstores will also keep track of customer preferences (according to their algorithms) and "push" your category online the way Netflix does.

What most of us don’t realize is that behind the bookstores are another set of salesmen who “rep” the publishers, maybe individually or maybe in related groups like academic books. The alternative is booths at fairs or tables at events, like the ones at the Montana Festival of the Book. If THOSE guys can get enthusiastic and push a book, that causes the bookstore to get excited, which might even make the local media curious. Those unknown salespersons spend their lives on the road. I suspect they read at night in motels. We need to know more about them. Is there a professional organization? What turns them on?

I would like to see an accounting of a big time publicity campaign plan with the costs spelled out. That would have to be the minimum a book is likely to make before a money-making publisher is really willing to look at it. But why couldn't an author pay for such a campaign directly? Would it be different from a millionaire running for political office?